'Stay on quota making OBC candidates tense'

The Centre tells the court that admission process in many Central Educational Institutions have been thrown out of gear, reports Satya Prakash.

The Central Government on Tuesday told the Supreme Court that the stay on implementation of 27 per cent OBC quota has led to wide-spread anxiety and confusion among the OBC candidates and the Central Educational Institutions (CEIs) that were to implement the controversial decision.

In its application seeking an early hearing of the petitions challenging the validity of the Central Educational Institutions (Reservation in Admission) Act, 2006 and the 93rd Constitutional Amendment, the Centre said that the admission process in several CEIs have already been thrown out of gear.

It said the stay on the operation of the Act has serious implications and it may cause irreparable loss as admission process in various CEIs have already started and in case the stay continued another academic year will be lost by the OBC candidates.

Since the admission process for the academic session 2007-08 had already been set in motion, many institutions had started inviting applications and conducting entrance tests and interviews in accordance with the time schedule on the basis of the Act without excluding any qualified OBC candidate, the Centre submitted.

“Several hundred candidates would lose their seats and there is no assurance that in the event that the petitions were to be dismissed, they would be able to qualify again,” the application, mentioned by Attorney General Milon K Banerjee before Chief Justice of India K G Balakrishnan, said. The CJI advanced the date of hearing to May 8.

The Centre specifically mentioned the case of Indian Institute of Foreign Trade and IIT Chennai and Delhi, which had started the process for implementing the OBC quota law from 2007-08.

IIFT had already sent admission letters to nine candidates belonging to OBC category and one such candidate in fact quit his job and also made arrangements for payment of fees, the application pointed out.

It further said that IIT Chennai and Delhi had even conducted interviews of OBC candidates but held back letters of offer of admission to two-year MBA Course on account of the March 29 stay order.